


Folie a Deux

by cheshirecat101



Category: Inception (2010), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception, Angst, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Dissociation, Dream Sharing, Dreams vs. Reality, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Johnlock - Freeform, Molrene, Multi, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Suicide, adlolly, johniarty, mormor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-21 13:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1551722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshirecat101/pseuds/cheshirecat101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock didn't jump off of Bart's roof because of Jim Moriarty. He jumped because of the question of whether this world is reality or not, and two years later John is struggling with the same question when Mycroft approaches him with a mission; to invade Jim Moriarty's dreams, and plant an idea in his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blinding

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this fic, 'Folie a Deux' is French for 'a madness shared by two'. Whew, okay, so this is a fic that has been in the planning stages since the fall, and I'm only just now actually getting serious work done on it. The idea came from this gifset that was going around tumblr with the basic idea that Sherlock jumped because he wasn't sure this world was real. My mind took that and ran away with it, and before I knew it I had nine pages of notes on Inception and an outline for several chapters. So in case you're wondering how accurate this is going to be to the movie, just remember. Nine. Pages. Of. Notes. Also, as any of you who follow me as an author know, I like to be annoying and tell you what music you should listen to. In this case, it's [Blinding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da6bBKLPEGg) by Florence and the Machine, and honestly, the song basically tells you about the direction of the entire fic. I'm not kidding. So give it a listen while you read, and I hope you enjoy the fic!

“I need you for this. One final time. It will be the last request I make of you.”

 

_“Hello?”_

_“John.” The voice on the other end of the line had been noticeably fractured. He knew that sound._

_“Sherlock, you okay?”_

“No, Mycroft, you know…you know I can’t.”

 

_“Turn around, and walk back the way you came,” the voice continued._

_“I’m coming in—”_

_“Just do as I ask!” A silence, short. “Please.”_

_He gripped the phone tighter, a sudden panic coming over him. “Where?” he asked, starting to walk back, and when he reached a particular point the voice said, “Stop there.”_

_“Sherlock?” There was far too much in that name, and the panic squeezed, hard._

“Once more, John, and I will never darken your doorstep again.” A pause. “Please. This is an essential mission.”

 

_“Okay, look up, I’m on the rooftop.”_

_Oh god oh god oh god oh god—“Oh god,” was all that managed to come out, because he could see him now. Could see Sherlock poised on the ledge, phone pressed to his ear and his coat hem fluttering slightly in a breeze. He didn’t realize that he’d stopped breathing until he started feeling dizzy, taking a deep, shaky inhale that didn’t seem to help._

_“I can’t come down, so we’ll just have to do it like this.”  
“Sherlock, what’s going on?” he asked around shortened breaths caused by the constriction in his chest. _

_The tone of Sherlock’s voice over the phone changed, shifted slightly. “I told you, John. I told you the truth so many times and still you refused to listen to me. This is the only way.”_

_Oh no, Jesus Christ, this couldn’t be about that, please god let it not be about that. “Sherlock, please—” He was cut off by the coldly logical, “It’s no use, John. You won’t get me to change my mind. I know I’m right. This world is not real. And I’m going to go home.”_

_The implications of that statement sent ice shooting through his veins, and instantly he was pleading, begging, “Please, no, Sherlock, I promise you it is real and you can’t do this, you can’t do this to me.”  
“Oh, John.” The voice was condescendingly affectionate in a way that was just so _ Sherlock _and god he was having trouble keeping it together. “I’m not doing anything to you, besides revealing the truth.” There was a pause, and he could hear the faint smile in Sherlock’s voice as he continued. “You always told me that if I died, there was no way you could continue to exist. So I know if I jump, eventually you’ll follow. Oh, it’ll take you a little while, but you will join me, John. And we can be together again, in reality.”_

_He couldn’t even speak for a minute, mouth hanging open as he stared up at the lone figure on the roof. His heart was pounding hard enough in his chest to make him shake in time with his pulse, each beat a blow, his own heartbeat steadily killing him and spurred on by the sight in front of him and the voice on the line. “Sherlock—don’t—” Whatever he was trying to say got stuck in his throat, and Sherlock’s voice was kind when he spoke.  
“I know, John. I love you too.” There was the sound of a deep breath being taken, and then a steady exhale. He was so sure of this. So sure of this decision. “You’re waiting for a train.”_

_“Sherlock, no.”_

_“A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you—”_

_“Sherlock, no, stop, please—”_

_“—but you can’t know for sure. But it doesn’t matter.”_

_“Stop it, please, god, Sherlock—”_

_“Because you’ll be together.” A pause, a breath in which the world held still and John couldn’t breathe. “Goodbye, John.”_

_He heard the sound the phone made as it hit the roof, and his own dropped as he screamed, “Sherlock!”_

John sighed, a concession, and lifted his eyes from his cup to look at Mycroft for the first time in the conversation. “What is it?” He pretended to not notice the slight smile on Mycroft’s lips that the other man hid just a second too late.

“Jim Moriarty is alive,” Mycroft said, “and we need you to perform inception on him.”

“Wait a second—Moriarty is _alive_?” John said, eyebrows nearly into his hairline from the sheer amount of his disbelief.

Mycroft nodded, waving his hand lightly as if this was an unimportant, minor detail. “It seems he wasn’t quite prepared to die for his cause,” he said, twisting the handle of his umbrella back and forth. John watched the movement, mostly so he wouldn’t have to think about where Mycroft was sitting. 

John sighed, leaning back in his chair. “And you want me to plant an idea inside his head,” he said, the words a statement and not a question.

A slight incline of the head. “Now, obviously the best resources will be available to you—”

“What’s the idea, Mycroft?”

Mycroft continued, evidently trying to breeze past that vital part of the conversation. “—we’ve already started to assemble a team of our top agents, all of whom will obviously be working under you—”

“No.”

Mycroft stopped abruptly, blinking for a moment in what John assumed was his way of showing surprise. Kind of like Sh—no. No, he wasn’t going to do this to himself. “Excuse me?”

“My mission, my team. You can present all the candidates you’d like, but I have to have a certain amount of control over it, Mycroft. If I don’t trust them then I won’t be able to work with them.” His voice was even, his gaze more than a little firm as he looked at the politician. “It’s the only way I’ll do it.”

“I already have two members who absolutely must accompany you. You are quite free to pick anyone else you would like,” Mycroft said, his gaze just as firm while his voice remained silkily diplomatic. While they’d never exactly been chums, it did seem like Mycroft had retreated back under his politician persona after…the roof. He wasn’t as expressive with him now, didn’t smile genuinely, didn’t stray from that polite, distant tone. It made John deeply sad and he couldn’t figure out why.

He paused, studying Mycroft for the first time since—well, considering this was the first time he’d seen him in months, probably for the first time since before the roof. It wasn’t like he was looking for anything in particular; he just had to look. Had to take the time to notice all of the little, subtle things that had changed since he’d last seen the man. Time didn’t have any meaning to him anymore, and he could only measure it in the changes he saw in others. And he could only measure reality by what was currently sitting in his left breast pocket. It was called disassociation. Losing touch with reality. Feeling as though everything around him, everyone he knew, even he himself, wasn’t real. A response to trauma, they’d told him. Then he’d stopped listening to them. Stopped listening to everyone. Stopped going out. Stopped caring. And certainly stopped dreaming. He wondered, sometimes, if other people who’d been where he had felt this way too. If they ever questioned their reality. He wondered, his eyes grazing over the other man, if Mycroft ever felt that way. Not that he could tell from Mycroft’s outward appearance.

 

_You know my methods, John; use them._

He knew his face twisted, just slightly, at that, and something flickered through Mycroft’s eyes to tell him that Mycroft caught it. Shit. He’d gotten so good at catching those little slips, at hiding everything from everyone, but that had been easier without a genius in the room, hadn’t it? He took a deep breath before continuing. “What’s the idea, Mycroft?” he asked, the delicate balance of his tone suggesting that he wasn’t going to ask again.

Mycroft seemed to study him for a minute, and he didn’t even want to think about what details he was picking up on. Bags under the eyes, psychosomatic limp making reappearances, cut from throwing and breaking something the other day, signs of sleeping on couch rather than in a bed, ink on face from falling asleep on top of newspaper this morning, few pounds of weight loss, stopped taking prescriptions—he closed his eyes and took a plunge.

“I haven’t been sleeping much or very well, my leg’s been acting up again, I’m constantly tired, sometimes just angry and sometimes depressed but I’ve stopped taking my meds, and I’ve lost four pounds,” he rattled off, and opened his eyes to look at a rather surprised Mycroft. “Now can we get to the bloody point?”

There was a delicate silence in which he breathed and Mycroft stared, and then that veil dropped back over those politician’s eyes and Mycroft looked away, gaze traveling, as if by accident, to the hand that had been turning his umbrella before his shock stopped it. It started again now, John’s eyes instantly moving to the motion. Mycroft would have been a brilliant hypnotist, if he wasn’t such a ponce.

“We want you,” he said after a few drawn out moments, “to get him to disband his empire.”

John snorted, an indelicate enough noise that Mycroft’s eyes actually turned back to him. “Right, yeah, because that’s going to be easy,” he said. “Inception requires a very simple idea to work, Mycroft, you can’t just go planting whatever you feel like in people’s heads.”

Mycroft delicately arched an eyebrow. “That’s why I’m asking you to do this, John. Because I believe you have the capability.”

“Capability doesn’t mean I can do magic. That idea will never work. We have to break it down into something much simpler before we can get anywhere with it, and even then I don’t think it’ll take because this is Jim bloody Moriarty we’re talking about and I’m pretty sure  evil is written into his soul.”

“There’s no harm in trying then, is there?” Mycroft asked with a saccharinely sweet smile. John just glared back.

“You realize I’m not guaranteeing success, right?” he asked after a minute, tone brisk. “I have no idea if this’ll work, no idea if we can even get it past concept stage. And even if we do make it into his head, I have no idea what Jim Moriarty’s mind is going to be like and no idea how successful we’ll be.”

“I understand, John.” Mycroft’s voice was far too smooth for his taste, a varnish to cover whatever unpleasantries lay underneath. “And I accept that you might not succeed. But we need you to at the very least attempt it.”

John watched him for a minute, trying to see the double meaning in Mycroft’s words, the ulterior motive hidden in his smile. Fuck. He wasn’t good enough at this, couldn’t do this as well as—bloody hell he really was going to drive himself insane tonight. His hand was suddenly itching to reach into his pocket but he stopped it, giving Mycroft a final once-over before nodding. “Alright,” he said, and this time he could see the change in Mycroft, the relaxation in the line of his shoulders. They really had been relying on him for this. “But this is the last time, Mycroft, the very last time.” His voice went a little softer, a little more strained. “You know I can’t do this anymore.”

For a second he thought he saw a real emotion flash across Mycroft’s features, but it was gone before he could catch it, and then Mycroft was standing fluidly and giving him a slight smile. Another politician’s smile. Empty eyes. Empty smile. “Of course, John,” he said, and after a moment John stood up as well. “The British government would like to thank you for your cooperation.”

He extended a hand to him, which John looked at warily for a moment before taking it and giving him a firm handshake, even though he just wanted to be left alone at this point and couldn’t give a rat’s arse about the British government. “Yeah, and thank it for taking my tax money,” he said, covering up real emotions with a quip and a small, slightly sarcastic smile.

Mycroft didn’t rise to the bait—he’d already known he wouldn’t—and released his hand, sealing his words with a smile as he said, “We’ll be seeing you soon, John.” He left just as he’d come, quietly and without any unnecessary dramatic flair, John moving to the window to watch him exit the flat and get into one of those monstrous black town cars he had.

The exhale was steadier than he’d thought it would be, but just as slow as he’d expected. It took a few more of those deep breaths before he found he could properly breathe again, the panic that had been threatening to cloud his brain receding, but only temporarily, a wave against an ocean shore. Currently it was low tide—he could handle it, he could do this, it was alright—but everything always swung back into the deep end eventually and he knew he was going to drown this time around. It was inevitable. He could do this, though. He could go in one last time, for Mycroft, and then he’d never have to do it again. It would be hard and painful and difficult, but he could—

Oh, who the fuck was he kidding? He couldn’t do this. He was liable to break down at any point in time, fall apart, fall to pieces. No one knew what was in his head. What was waiting, what he’d been avoiding in dreams, what would come out the second he was under. He was putting everyone in danger with this. He knew that. God, did he know that. Whatever happened, it would be his fault. But Mycroft had asked, and Mycroft must know, right? Mycroft knew everything. So he must know about this. Did that mean he thought it was safe? Or just that he counted on John being unstable for some unknown purpose? God, his head was spinning and he just wanted to lie down in the bed that still smelled of _him_ in a room coated with dust and memories but really he wanted himthere and he couldn’t have him but he knew—he knew—he knew a way to have him and he could if he really wanted to but it wasn’t the same wasn’t right and that hurt everything hurt and he just _missed him_ so much and this was all his fault and he couldn’t breathe and oh god oh god oh god—

He shuddered in a breath, forcing out an exhale as he tried to ignore the unreleased tears that were blurring his vision. He pulled himself away from the window, still breathing shakily as he sat back down in his chair, covering his eyes with his hand. A few more inhales and exhales and his breathing was steadier again, though his heart was still beating feebly in his chest. It didn’t want to go on. He didn’t want to go on. He was just so tired. Tired and unbalanced and incredibly broken. His fingers slipped apart slightly, almost of their own accord, until he could see the chair across from him, the one Mycroft had vacated. God, that alone caused a pang in his chest. It was just a chair. Just a fucking chair. In this fucking flat, with his fucking things, and his fucking room, and his fucking ghost. Everything still hurt.

But he could handle this. He almost laughed. He didn’t have a choice in handling this. He’d already agreed, and giving Mycroft his word was tantamount to selling his soul to the Devil. No way to get out now. No way to step back and take the easy road. God, why did he agree to do this? No, he didn’t actually want to start trying to think of real reasons. That would go down a bad road very quickly. He clenched his fist tight, using the pain of the still healing cut on his palm to focus him and bring him back down to earth, which it did rather quickly. Right. Okay. No use focusing on this anymore. He’d already said yes, and there was no going back now. He had no choice but to keep going, like he did every day. Go through the motions. Pretend to be alive. Pretend that this was real.

***

“I could have picked my own point man, Mycroft. I would rather have picked my own point man,” he said, walking next to Mycroft as the other man led him down a hallway identical to the six other ones they’d already been down. Where Mycroft found these places he never knew, but in this case having an abandoned warehouse at his disposal was helpful. They needed their own space to work, somewhere where no one would accidentally stumble across what they were doing or interrupt them. Really, he would have been happy with any space that was away from Mycroft.

“I informed you previously that two members of your team were already determined and that that was non-negotiable.  Besides, I believe you’ll enjoy working with Colonel Moran.” He pushed open the doors to a wider space, a somewhat sunny open room where four people were waiting for them, only three of which John knew. Mycroft straightened up, surveying the room, then turned to John. “This, Dr. Watson, is Colonel Sebastian Moran,” Mycroft said, presenting a blonde man who was built like a house and towered over John. “He’s been with the program for a few years now, and I can assure you he’s the very best operative we have.”

Sebastian extended a hand that John took, sharing a firm handshake with him. “Captain,” he said, his voice the purr of a dangerous cat.

“Colonel,” John answered, and they both released hands, instantly reverting to military stances. “So you’ve done this before?”

“Inception, no. Extraction numerous times,” Sebastian answered.

“Good. I like forward to working with you, Colonel,” John said.

“At your request, we engaged the lovely Ms. Hooper to be our chemist. Though truth be told, there were few others who could perform as well as she can,” Mycroft said, and Molly nearly blushed.

“That’s not true, it’s simple, really,” she said, but turned a smile on John. “Hi, John. It’s been awhile.”

John smiled back, though his didn’t quite reach his eyes. They both knew exactly why it had been awhile, especially since he no longer went anywhere near St. Bart’s. “It’s nice to see you again, Molly. I’m glad you agreed to help us.”

“Of course! It’s important, isn’t it? I’d love to help.” Her smile was nearly infectious, and he had to look away before it started to hurt. The next person he saw, though, made a grin break out.

“Eames,” he said warmly, and the other man chuckled before they moved closer for a hug. “It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, well you ducked out of the army and went off to do secret things like this,” Eames responded.

“Apparently so did you,” John reminded, and Eames chuckled.

“I wouldn’t say it was my first choice,” he said. “But once I got involved, I found some reasons to stay. Mostly one.” He added a wink at the end of this sentence, and John laughed.

“Remind me to ask you about that later,” he said, and Eames shook his head with a smile, leaning back against the table.

“I must admit, I was rather surprised when I discovered that you and Mr. Eames served in the army together,” Mycroft said.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Mycroft, and I’d rather leave it that way,” John said, and then smiled slightly. “Hi, Greg.”

Greg had been his final choice, and the most heavily debated. Greg had never been involved in this, knew absolutely nothing about this world, but John was dragging him into it with hardly any warning at all. Sure, Greg had a choice in the matter, but he really had no idea what he was choosing, and had fallen into the unknown simply because of loyalty. God, he was going to feel guilty about this later. “Hey, John,” Greg said, and his tone was all too genial for John’s taste. “Mind explaining exactly what kind of madness you’ve dragged me into?”

John chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Trust me, everything will be explained completely. And remember, if you want to leave at any time, you can,” he said, his eyes more serious as he looked back at Greg. The DI seemed slightly alarmed by the sudden seriousness, and John supposed he had reason to be, considering the fact that he had no idea what he was getting himself into and John was giving him a hint. The smallest one he could, because god did he need Greg on this even if he was going to feel bad about it later.

“’Course, John,” he said, and John nodded, giving him a slight smile before turning back to Mycroft, who was wearing the same look of slight displeasure he’d had when John first told him he wanted to bring Greg in. It wasn’t actual distaste for the DI—no, Mycroft didn’t seem to take any issue with Greg as a person. It was more that John wanted someone who had no experience to come in on this mission, for no reason other than he trusted him and didn’t trust anyone Mycroft would have picked. And there was the hitch. The fact that he didn’t trust anyone from Mycroft’s team.

“Alright, Mycroft, that’s one of yours and three of mine. You told me you had an architect for me,” John said, and Mycroft’s face instantly smoothed back into a politician’s smile; empty, and devoid of meaning.  
“Of course. Though I don’t believe you will approve, Dr. Watson.”

John’s brow furrowed. “And why won’t I approve?”

“Because it’s me,” a voice he knew too well said, and sure enough, when he turned he came face to face with Irene Adler, her blood red lips lifted slightly at the corners in a smile that was neither friendly nor cold. Teasing, he’d say, as always. She looked (unfortunately) as good as always, kitted out in a dress that managed to be both seductive and modest, and he wondered for a minute if he had it in him to hit a woman. This one? Probably.

“No,” was all he said, his voice a flat edge. The corners of her mouth lifted further.

“Not still sore about our past history, are you, Dr. Watson?” she asked, and he had to turn away from her, huffing out an angry breath before turning to Mycroft.

“You can’t be serious. She worked with him, she could betray us and leave us stranded in the middle of his mind. It’s not safe,” he said.

Mycroft’s gaze was entirely level. “I can assure you, Dr. Watson, that Ms. Adler is not a threat to the mission. In fact, she has valuable information that will help you during it, and can assist in the planning process due to her experience with Mr. Moriarty.”

“Hang on,” Greg said, about a step, or maybe a dozen, behind the others. “You mean Moriarty as in Jim Moriarty? You know, the criminal mastermind that—well, that—that blew up all those buildings.” John’s heart gave a feeble twitch, knowing Greg had only struggled with the words because ‘blowing up buildings’ was not the first thought that came to mind when Jim Moriarty was involved. This suspicion was only confirmed when he caught a glimpse of Molly’s expression, her face having visibly fallen at Greg’s words.

 

_“John, you know what you have to do.”_

He quickly shook his head, pulling his focus back to the conversation, though his hand was already nearly inside his shirt when he remembered he was in public and stopped himself. He could check later. He had to at least pretend to be here. And Mycroft was speaking.

“…and your entire purpose in being here, Detective Lestrade, is to access Mr. Moriarty’s mind and plant an idea.”

“Inception,” Irene said, attention suddenly intensely focused on Mycroft. “It can’t be done.”

“It can, it’s just bloody difficult,” Eames said, switching the Woman’s focus. “What’s the idea?”

“For him to disband his empire.”

Eames instantly started shaking his head. “No, see, that’s already too complex, too many motivations that go into it. The subconscious is motivated by emotion, not reason.”

“So we translate it,” Sebastian said. He hadn’t said a word before but John knew that he was carefully watching the conversation, listening in even while his eyes were, for some reason, fixed on John.

“Turn logos into pathos,” Irene completed for him, eyes shining with something too close to the cunning of a fox for John’s liking.

“Somehow, yes,” John said, and all eyes went to him. He would have to get used to that, being the leader of the mission. It hadn’t been like that since the army. Since then he’d been following Sh—another vicious clamp snapped into place. This was not the time or place, this wasn’t the flat, where he could break down by himself and rebuild slowly, using memories as faulty glue. He had to keep it together here.  “Somehow we have to break that idea down and turn it into something emotional. It’ll be damn difficult, this entire thing will be, but it is possible.”

“How would you know?” Irene asked, her eyes narrowing slightly as they focused in on John, her gaze sharp, observant. Not quite observant enough.

 

_“You see but you don’t observe, John!”_

 

He nearly bit through his lip. “I’ve done it before,” he said, and her question came instantly; “When?”

He didn’t answer, just looked back at her, and she smiled as if she’d proven something. She had no idea. None of them did. “Excellent. So we have the blind leading the blind.”

“Dr. Watson is the one who is the most familiar with dream-sharing and has the most experience, especially when it comes to delicate matters such as this one,” Mycroft said, and John was surprised and a little bit thankful for how cutting his voice was. And it was true; despite the other faults lurking beneath the surface, he did have the most experience. He had been deeper involved than any of them.

“Now, Ms. Adler, if you have any other objections on the matter, I would gladly dismiss you from this venture and let you buy your freedom another way,” Mycroft continued, and the look on Irene’s face said enough for everyone. “Thank you. Now, unless there’s anything further, I believe I can leave you in Dr. Watson’s capable hands to discuss the mission in further detail. No? Excellent. Dr. Watson, I will be checking in periodically to see how the planning is progressing. We would like to keep this on a rather tight schedule, after all. In the meantime, this space is entirely yours and can be used for every one of your meetings. If you need anything at all, you have my number.” And he left, with a far too cheerful smile and swinging his brolly.

John turned back to his team as soon as Mycroft was gone, looking over the array of faces that ranged from fresh (Molly) to worn (Greg) to prepared (Sebastian and Eames) and of course, to cunning (Irene). The last time. Right. Mycroft had promised that this was the last time. He could do this just one more time. Just…once. And then he could go back to never dreaming again. “Okay,” he said, once again resisting the urge to reach inside his shirt. He could do that in just a minute. Just a few minutes explaining things, then he could excuse himself for a little while. God. “I know some of you—and definitely Greg—have questions. So. Anyone besides Greg have anything they want to ask?”

“What the plan is would be great,” Irene said, that little smirk on her lips again that made John force himself to take a deep breath before answering.

“Our objective is to plant the idea in Jim Moriarty’s mind that he should disband his empire. How the bloody hell we’re going to accomplish that is something we’ll have to figure out as we get working. Molly, Mycroft was saying something earlier about sedation?”

Molly perked up at the mention of her name. “Oh, yeah, um,” she straightened up from where she had been leaning against the table. “When performing inception—in theory at least, I wouldn’t know—you have to plant the idea very deeply in their subconscious, more than one level down, two or three at least. But at those levels the dreams are unstable, so in order to make it stable enough, you have to go under heavy sedation.” Her voice picked up a little speed with her excitement. “I made a compound that will allow us to go deep enough under to build three stable levels. But it leaves inner ear function unimpaired, allowing for us to still have a kick.”

“Clever girl,” Irene said, and the tone of her voice combined with the look she gave Molly was enough to make the other woman blush.

“Sorry, what’s a kick? And what’s this about levels?” Greg asked, sporting the most impressive confused look John had ever seen.

“Sorry, Greg,” he said with a slight, apologetic smile. “I know you’re a bit behind on all of this but we’ll get you up to speed in no time. I was going to do it myself but since we have the aid of the lovely Ms. Adler, I think she should show you. It’s good to learn architectural skills, and if we have two people who know the ultimate layout of the dream, we’re better off anyway.”

No one could say that his smile to Irene was anything but friendly, and hers back anything but polite, but they both lowered the temperature of the room by several degrees. She delicately stood, beckoning Greg over with a manicured red nail, and Greg glanced at John, asking his unspoken permission. He nodded and Greg followed Irene to two chairs set up in the room with what looked like a briefcase between them. As she hooked them both up to it, Greg shifting uncomfortably in his chair, John watched, trying not to flinch when she depressed the middle button and they both slipped under.

“Excuse me, I’ll be right back. You three start brainstorming about how we can break that idea down,” John said, and quickly made his way to the bathroom, the door not even entirely shut before he was reaching inside his shirt and pulling out a bloodstained piece of blue fabric. His fingers were shaking, his body was shaking, his mind was shaking. _Help._ He needed help, he knew that. That’s what they always told him. That he couldn’t do it, couldn’t handle this on his own, couldn’t shut everyone out. Oh, but he was so good at that last part. And no one could help, to be honest. This was the only thing that did, anymore. His eyes slipped shut as he pressed the fabric to his nose, breathing deeply for a minute as he tried to regain himself. Right. He was still here. This was still real. He was okay.

 

_“This is the only way, John.”_

His eyes flew back open, still breathing in the fabric. Blood, a hint of smoke, wool, and something that was just uniquely…uniquely…He couldn’t finish that thought with the name that belonged to it. Real. Oh god, he almost laughed at that. How could it be real when it felt like everything was slipping through his fingers, reality and sanity and stability falling out of his too tight grasp. He was trying to hold onto all of the pieces and he just couldn’t anymore. But he had to. And this was his guideline, remember? He could trust this.

One.

Two.

Three breaths.

The square went back inside of his shirt, hidden away again from prying eyes, and he made sure he didn’t look in the mirror as he left the room.

***

Greg wasn’t really sure what he’d been expecting. It sure as hell wasn’t this.

It took his brain at least three tries to accept the fact that the city he was looking at right now wasn’t real. Not just a part of it, not just the street they were on or the nearby café. No, the entire thing _wasn’t real_. It didn’t exist anywhere, they weren’t really here, this was all just inside of Irene’s head, evidently. It didn’t make any sense. No matter how many times Irene went over shared dreaming or he saw her change the scenery just by willing it to be something else or by straight up defying the laws of physics, he couldn’t believe it. Who could? God, how long had John been involved in this? And had Sherlock been too? It sounded like his kind of stuff. Out there, but interesting. Dream sharing. Entire cities made out of nothing but imagination. Being able to find secrets hidden away in people’s minds. It was…it was startling, mind boggling. The best he could do was try to keep up, listening to Irene as she explained things, leading him down city streets that she’d created and that were apparently filled with Greg’s subconscious. Which could, evidently, converge and attack Irene at any moment if she made too many changes.

“But why do they attack?” Greg asked, finding it hard to keep up with Irene even though she was in heels.

“Because I’m an intruder. I’m a virus, and they’re the white blood cells purging me from the system,” she explained, and cast a positively chilling smile over her shoulder at Greg. “If you draw the attention of the subconscious they start to look for the dreamer. In this case, me. And if they find me and I change too many things, they’ll attack.”

Greg’s brow furrowed over chocolate eyes. “So the projections are seriously dangerous.”

Irene shrugged lightly. “If they’re trained, or if you do something to provoke them into action. But if you die in a dream, you wake up.”

“Yeah,  but being ripped to shreds is being ripped to shreds regardless of whether or not the world you’re in is real,” Greg muttered, and he could have sworn he saw Irene smile at this as she turned away again, striding with purpose along city streets that looked, well, ordinary. Ordinary except for the fact that she could bend the rules of physics all she liked and create things out of thin air with her mind. It was amazing. Frightening, but amazing.

“How on earth can you create the level of detail to make this all feel real?” Greg asked after a minute, following Irene up a set of steps that hadn’t been there two seconds ago.

“The key word there is ‘feel’,” Irene said, and Greg took the moment to admire her slim legs as she climbed the steps, heels clicking on the cement. No, he absolutely did _not_ have a chance with that. “When you’re in a dream, it always feels real, doesn’t it? It’s only when you wake up that you realize something was odd. Building dreams like this—” she waved a hand at the city that Greg was still reeling at as if it was nothing “—is all about the feel. The atmosphere of the dream. If the dreamer feels that it’s real, they won’t pay any attention to the oddities. Understand?”

Greg nodded, then remembered she was still at least three steps ahead of him and couldn’t see him. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “So these…levels that they were talking about, you’re going to build those?”

She stopped quite suddenly, in the middle of the bridge, leaning against one of the railings to face him. He would never say it, but he was glad that she’d actually stopped and looked at him for once. It was hard enough to tell whether she was telling the truth or not without her facing away from him as well.

“Yes. I am the architect, after all,” she said, blood red lips drawn up into a smile that he knew he would never trust. It was pretty, though. “I do have some experience with building dreamscapes. The one rule that you absolutely have to remember is to never draw from memories. If you build things in dreams based on real places, you’ll start to lose sight of reality.” She sized him up for a minute, drawing her eyes up his entire body as Greg shifted uncomfortably. “You could help me, if you wanted to.”

Greg stared. “You want me to help you build the dreams?”

“I didn’t say I wanted you to, I said you could if _you_ wanted to. I’m sure John would prefer someone besides me, someone he trusts, knowing the layout as well,” Irene said. “It’s smarter that way. Two people means if we split up they don’t have to be in constant contact with me about anything involving the layout. Molly already has enough to do, I don’t know Eames, John refuses to look at any designs, and I don’t trust Sebastian Moran.”

Greg sorely wanted to ask why John refused to look at the designs, but the more pressing question was, “Why don’t you trust Moran?”

She turned, placing her elbows on the railing of the bridge and looking out over the city for long enough that Greg thought about asking again. “Because he’s a snake,” she said, and straightened up, walking away and beckoning him to follow. She launched into further explanations before Greg could ask any more questions, and he was sure she was evading the subject.

But even after they woke up, rejoining the team—and god, how was it possible that a few hours in the dream world was only a few minutes in real life?—as they all simultaneously resisted the urge to hit things while trying to come up with a plan, her words stayed with him, bouncing back and forth between the shadowy parts of his mind and the bright, conscious areas. A snake. Very particular word choice on her part, and while he didn’t know for certain, he was pretty sure that she and Moran had never worked together before. Then again, Irene was supposedly the villain of the outfit; she wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of her heart, she was doing it to buy her way out of Mycroft’s clutches. A rather less than noble goal, in Greg’s opinion. So for all he knew, she could have only said it to sow the seeds of discord, try and break apart the mission before it even began. But she needed this to earn her freedom, so why would she sabotage it now? If a betrayal was in the works, it made more sense for it to happen in the dream, where they were all trapped there and she’d technically fulfilled her role. Though, honestly, he wasn’t sure how she could betray them at that point. Secretly tell Moriarty that the whole thing was actually real so he wouldn’t buy into the idea? Maybe.

He didn’t know why, but her words still stuck in his head. Maybe it was because he didn’t know Moran and had never worked with him before, or because the ex-soldier was mostly silent and just stood by, watching everything that was going on. He contributed, of course, and when he did speak he didn’t mince words, but there was something unsettling in the way he watched everything that was going on and didn’t bother with being overly friendly with the other members of the team. Professional. That’s what he was. Coldly professional, with the kind of silent stillness usually reserved for assassins. Well, he had apparently been a sniper, so there was that. Still, Greg found himself watching him with a sharper eye, keeping better track of the colonel’s actions as the plan began to come together.

And it did, somehow, start coming together. The main hitch that prevented them from planning anything else was the idea itself; if they couldn’t figure out a good way to break the idea down and present it in a more manageable way, the objective simply wasn’t possible.

“It has to be emotional,” Eames insisted. “He’s not going to be motivated by any type of logic or reason, especially not if he’s as insane as you all say he is.”

“But if he’s a psychopath he won’t respond to any emotional argument,” Greg said, which had been his sticking point from the very beginning. It was all well and good to say that they needed to persuade Moriarty using emotion, but how exactly was that going to work when the man was a raging psychopath, usually indicating that he simply didn’t have any?

“Okay, let’s start with the idea, yeah?  The goal is to get him to disband his empire. Why would he do that? What emotional reason would he have to do that?” John asked, standing with his arms crossed against his chest. Most of John’s body language, Greg had noticed, was defensive nowadays.

Molly piped up. “Maybe ‘this life is too dangerous for me’?”

“Nice try, sweetheart, but trust me when I say that won’t be nearly enough to persuade him,” Irene said, and Molly blushed lightly. Irene looked like she was ready to devour her before John clearing his throat brought her attention back to the matter at hand and she said, “What if we take him back to the very start?”

Greg’s brow furrowed. “What d’you mean?”

“Find out where this life started for him, and bring him back there, make him regret that decision so he would regret having ever gone down this road.”

Sebastian shook his head. “I can’t see that working,” he said, his voice, as usual, devoid of any emotion.

“No, think about it, it’s brilliant,” John said, face slowly lighting up as his mind started working. God, when was the last time he’d seen John light up like that? _Focus, Greg_. “We start off modern day, plant a seed of doubt in his mind that this is what he really wanted. Then we continue with that on the next level, widen that gap in his confidence. Finally, we lead him back to where it all began; at the pool with Carl Powers.”

“Jim killed Carl Powers?” Molly asked, sounding mildly scandalized, and John nodded.

“That, at least, is where Sherlock said he probably got his start,” John said.

Greg heard the sharp inhale from Molly before anything else, and didn’t have to turn to look at her to know that her eyes were fixed on John. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on John. Greg could pinpoint the exact moment that he realized what he said, a moment behind when everyone else did; a sick look crossed his face, sadness following on its heels, and he exhaled clearly, shakily. His hand drifted towards the buttons of his shirt, but he pulled it back again, tucking it under his arm once more as he cleared his throat to clear some of the tension in the room.

“I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s the best idea we’ve had. What do you think, Eames?”

Eames seemed to debate for a moment, leaning back in his chair. “That could work. Start with the first level as ‘This is not what I wanted’. The next level down we feed into that, maybe by showing the flaws in his current life. ‘I can’t trust anyone around me’, or ‘none of my relationships are actually real’. Irene would have to decide that one, she knows him best.” Greg, watching Sebastian, saw something tighten in the man’s jaw. “Then the last level down would have to be—”

“‘I went wrong when I killed Carl Powers’,” John finished for him, and pursed his lips for a moment, thinking, then nodded. “I think that’s it. What about the levels themselves?”

“Well, each level has to relate to the part of the subject’s subconscious that we’re trying to access,” Irene said, crossing her legs.

“So the last level would have to lead him to the pool, or thereabouts,” Greg said, and Irene nodded, continuing, “The rest don’t matter as much. But Greg and I can start working on designs if this is the idea we’re running with.”

John looked somewhat surprised at the fact that Irene was seemingly taking Greg under her wing, but he nodded once, shortly, and Greg saw the way his gaze lingered on Irene for a second before he turned away. To be honest, he didn’t know what exactly the past history between the two of them was. He knew about when it had happened, he remembered the Christmas party at 221B during which Sherlock’s phone made obscene noises and John seemed to be counting them, but that was about it. And John and Sherlock hadn’t been together then. They had been soon after that, he was certain of it, but what Irene had to do with that and how she’d been involved with Sherlock wasn’t something he was privy to. Nor was he going to pry.

Because honestly, he had to say that while there was something just dishonest in general about the Woman, she did her work briskly and efficiently and seemed to do her best to contribute to the team. She could have easily sat back and let everyone else do the hard work while she just built, but she was contributing, offering ideas and chiming in when needed. The dynamic between her and the rest of the team seemed to be one of general acceptance, though poor Molly blushed at nearly everything the other woman said. Then again, he had caught her smiling at Irene in her usual sweet way more than a few times, and the smile Irene would give her back said less ‘I want to take your panties off with my teeth’ and more ‘I’d treat you like royalty like you deserve’. Strange, all of this was very strange.

Once they had an idea, though, things started rolling. They continued to build off the same breakdown of the levels, everyone doing their separate parts to prepare for things, which meant that he spent a lot of time alone with Irene discussing and planning the actual designs for each level. Building was something that he picked up pretty quickly, though he had to give a fair amount of credit to her skills at a teacher. Yeah, she was domineering and more than a little imposing, but that just made sure her lessons got through quickly and that he actually retained the things he learned. Besides, working with her on a day to day basis allowed him to actually observe her, and while he wasn’t a Holmes he did have a pretty keen sense of observation based on his numerous years at NSY. And Irene, though perhaps a little untrustworthy, didn’t seem all that bad. He certainly couldn’t see why John took such a disliking to her, though perhaps that had more to do with whatever incident had happened involving him, Irene, and Sherlock. Though Sebastian seemed to dislike her as well, but that was almost certainly a mutual thing between the two of them, and one he didn’t entirely understand. Ah, that was an odd bit, there.

_“Because he’s a snake.”_

Try as he might, he couldn’t get those words out of his head. Hell, Irene had said them after they’d known each other for less than an hour, and somehow he still found himself listening to her. It made the clear animosity between Moran and Irene that much stranger, because while Irene had already expressed her feelings towards the colonel, he’d never seen or heard Sebastian respond in kind. The way they acted around each other spoke of a mutual dislike, though, and he couldn’t quite figure out what was going on between the two of them. Another story he hadn’t heard and probably would never hear. Honestly, though, he had much more important things to focus on than team dynamics. Like John.

John, who spent most of his time looking like death and was the thinnest Greg had ever seen him. John, who looked like he never slept anymore. John, who didn’t speak unless it was to discuss the mission. John, who never genuinely smiled anymore. John, who looked at the world with dead eyes, like he wasn’t really seeing it. John, who was a ghost of the man he used to be. True, John hadn’t been anywhere near his former self ever since…well, ever since the roof, but he looked worse than ever now. Nervous, and jumpy, and perpetually exhausted, like every day he battled a demon and every night he stayed awake to make sure it wouldn’t come back. Greg found it impossible not to worry about the other man, considering he already knew how much of a toll the roof had taken on him and this mission of Mycroft’s was only making it worse. He’d find him staring off into the distance, or reaching for his chest, near his heart, before stopping himself, or just going absolutely silent in the middle of a discussion as if he wasn’t there at all. As if he was somewhere else entirely. John Watson was breaking down, and Greg was afraid he was the only one who could see it.

***

“Greg,” Irene said, snapping her fingers, and Greg was drawn back out of the reverie he’d slipped into.

“Sorry,” he instantly said, and she responded, “If you’re not going to pay attention when I speak I’m going to start whipping my words into you. Understood?”

He nodded and she seemed slightly satisfied, her slim, elegant fingers holding up her heart shaped locket for him to see. “As I was trying to explain, this is a totem. They allow you to keep track of reality in and out of dreams,” she said. “Each one is unique to the individual, and you never let anyone else touch your totem. Ever.”

“How do they help you keep track of reality?” Greg asked, brow furrowed.

“They’re different in our world than they are in the dream world. Say you had a top as a totem. Maybe in the dream world it continually spun without stopping, but in the real world it toppled over. A simple, elegant way to keep track of reality.”

He nodded, mulling it over. Another facet to this new world he’d entered, another amazing thing to add to the list. Another frightening thing too, considering the ominous tone of Irene’s words. _Lose track of reality_. God, did that really happen to people? “So it shouldn’t be anything ordinary or commonplace?”

“Not unless you want to start questioning whether you’re in a dream or not,” Irene answered shortly.

“Does that really happen? People forgetting what’s real and what isn’t?” he asked, and she looked at him for a long moment.

“You’ve been inside those dreams, Greg, you know how real they feel. It all seems real until you wake up. If anyone ever tries to extract information from you or perform inception, you’ll need to be able to tell that you’re in a dream so you know what’s happening.” She paused, blue eyes fixed on Greg’s brown ones, and he was surprised at the strength of her gaze and again caught himself wondering how she had become involved with dream sharing. “Be very careful, Greg. You never want to get lost in your own head.”

She sat back again, and he wasn’t quite sure what to say. Thank you for terrifying me with the idea of getting lost in my own head? Thanks for the pep talk about going insane and forgetting reality? But really, this is important and thanks for informing me about totems? He found himself saved from forming a response by Irene sighing lightly, looking at one of the models they’d been building of a level.

Greg’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”

“I’m having trouble with this third level. I know he has to get to the safe, but currently that’s all I have and I have to work on finishing up the other two. But this is extremely important,” she answered, resting her head against one of her manicured hands. He would never get over his amazement over the fact that she looked so put together on a day to day basis. He had trouble remembering to do laundry, and she showed up to work in heels every day. A sign of power, to be sure. And that was her MO, after all, wasn’t it?

“I could design it, if you wanted,” Greg offered with a shrug of his shoulder, and Irene’s keen eyes went to him.

“You want to design it?” she asked, and he smiled and said, “I didn’t say I wanted to design it, I said I could if _you_ wanted me to.”

And ah, there was a rare genuine smile from Ms. Adler, and Greg found himself grinning like an idiot back because he liked the odd sort of friendship they’d struck up doing this work together. Perhaps friendship wasn’t even the right word; it was more like a rapport, an easygoing back and forth between them. It was nice because it was a professional sort of relationship, but a smooth one, a very efficient one. Or maybe Greg had just been working with the people at the Yard too long and had started to hate them just because he saw them too much. Either way, it was good, and he wasn’t really surprised when Irene handed off everything she had for the designs for the third level to him and said, “Good luck.”

If there was one thing he was good at, it was throwing himself into his work. It had been a bit of a sore spot with the ex, who’d always said that he was a workaholic and didn’t actually care about her. It was particularly hilarious when she then claimed that that was why she’d started stepping out, trying to shift the blame onto Greg, which sadly he accepted for a certain amount of time just to make things work, and then had refused to pretend anymore. He was better off without her, in his own opinion. Good riddance. But, that was what work was good for. Distracting him from any unwelcome thoughts, any rough patches, anything at all. And this was fascinating work, important work, designing dream spaces to put in _Jim Moriarty’s mind_. He’d never been involved in…in…something so vital. It was powerful; heady.

And then he noticed something he never should have. The new workload that came from designing the complex third level meant that he was keeping later hours, later than the rest of the team, and he was usually the last one to leave. Or he would have been, if Molly and John didn’t stay in John’s office after everyone else left. It was the oddest thing. He’d walk past where they were camped out and see John asleep in a chair, hooked up to a machine that Molly was watching over. She’d always smile and say goodnight cheerily, but if he tried to come any closer she’d ignore him or close the door, like he wasn’t supposed to see what was going on.

Why on earth was John going under alone? Wouldn’t that bring him into his own dreams? But they still dreamt normally at night. Greg had dreams just like usual, only these were the normal, boring kind, not lucid dreaming. So why would John be going into his own dreams? The only reason he could think of was that it involved planning for their task, but that didn’t make any sense even to Greg, who had an extremely limited knowledge of this world that he’d only just entered into. After all, they’d already worked out whose dream it was going to be for each level, and John wasn’t dreaming any of the levels. He couldn’t anyway, because they needed him through to the very end, but John had refused to from the very start. He wouldn’t look at any of the plans, refused to know any part of the dreamscape, which was the strangest thing to Greg. Wouldn’t the leader want to know everything so he would be prepared? But John refused. And apparently he was going into his own head on almost a nightly basis for some unknown reason. Whatever it was, it was clearly private, as John was going in alone and Molly seemed to just be keeping watch over him.

He should have left it there. He should have just accepted that it was a private matter of John’s and walked away from it. Instead, he was an idiot. Well, to be fair, the opportunity presented itself. They were pretty much ready for their mission, weeks of planning culminating in a plan that was as brilliant as it was complex. Every single member of the team had poured themselves into their work, and it showed in how carefully constructed the strategy was, every detail worked out and the whole thing polished until it shone. Irene, Molly, Eames and Greg had a bit of a celebration about it, though that mostly consisted of Irene flirting with Molly while Eames and Greg chatted about various things. Eames was a good guy and it was easy to see why John had been close with him in the army, which meant that Greg got along with him swimmingly as well. And that they could both ignore the little whispers between Molly and Irene between their more audible flirting, though Greg could have sworn that Irene whispered, “I could have you on your knees,” and Molly replied, “Not if I had you on yours,” which made Irene smile the most delighted smile Greg had ever seen from her. He coughed and returned to his conversation with Eames who raised an eyebrow and said, “Please tell me you heard that too.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t,” Greg answered, and Eames chuckled.

They drank in companionable silence for a minute, and then Eames asked, “Did you figure out a totem yet? Since everything’s pretty much wrapped up and ready to go, you’ll need it soon.”

“Yeah, I did,” Greg said, fishing in his pocket for a minute before coming up with a white knight piece from a chess set and holding it up for Eames to see.

“Can I see it?”

Greg smiled and put it back in his pocket. “Not falling for that one,” he said, and Eames grinned as he said, “Had to test you on that one. Accidentally bet mine in a poker game once.” He patted his pocket where Greg knew that a poker chip lay, though he didn’t know anything else about Eames’s totem. As it should be. “Arthur never let me hear the end of it.”

Greg shook his head with a grin, and they slipped back into the easy conversation that they’d been in the entire evening, both pretending to ignore how Molly and Irene were slowly getting closer and closer, Irene’s hand at the point now where she was tracing circles with her fingertips on the inside of Molly’s thigh, just above the knee. At least they were having a good time, which was more than he could say for Sebastian or John. Sebastian had left as soon as they were done working, silent and taciturn as always, and John had smiled at their festivities before going into his makeshift office and staying there.

Eventually, though, the celebration wound down, mostly because Irene and Molly left, though for some strange reason Greg had the feeling that they weren’t sneaking off to shag. There was just something about the way Irene placed her hand on the small of Molly’s back, in the way Molly smiled at her warmly and Irene smiled back, in the way Molly waved goodbye with a bright smile. Or maybe he was reading into things too much. Either way, it was Eames’s turn to leave, mentioning something about a boyfriend who was keeping their bed warm. Greg had known already that Eames had a boyfriend—Arthur, right?—someone mentioned here and there and overheard in a conversation between him and John where John, god, for once, looked actually happy.

And where was John anyway? After the door had closed behind Eames he was left alone in the empty room, setting his glass down on a side table and debating whether or not to just leave. But this was a real chance to talk to John, find out a bit about how he was doing, check up on him. Yeah, he already knew what he was going to do. He went to John’s office on the pretense of saying goodnight to him, but found John asleep in his chair, hooked up to a machine by himself again.

He should leave. Right? This was clearly something private, or John would have shared it with him. True, John didn’t share much at all anymore, but he still seemed to trust Greg, like him, and he had specifically requested him for this mission. He’d be violating that trust if he did this. And it wasn’t any of his business anyway, and had nothing to do with the mission. It wasn’t something that he needed to know, not to do his job as he had been doing it, and that was the important part. But John didn’t confide in him. John didn’t tell anything. And John looked like he was fading away more and more every day. Something else was going on here, something was hurting John more than he was already hurting, and if he could help with that he desperately wanted to. John needed his help, and deserved it. Didn’t he? Fuck. This was a terrible idea. And yet Greg found himself sitting down in the chair next to John, hooking himself up, and joining John in his dream.


	2. Heart Shaped Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Greg takes a trip into John's unconscious and finds someone he never expected to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the rather delayed chapter two! Thank you everyone for you patience, it means a lot to me. So here it is. The violin piece that's played is the melody from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2VwLMs0kVc). Thanks and I hope you enjoy!

_“I know where I am, John.”_

_His baritone had been cold enough to hurt, his tone the one that usually brooked no argument. Not today._

_“No, you don’t,” John said firmly. “You lost track of what was real in there and you haven’t quite made it back yet.”_

_“Really? You think that you of all people would know better than me? You think this world is real, John, you’ve convinced yourself that it’s real,” Sherlock answered, the words rapid and his tone straddling the line between frustrated and furious._

_“Sherlock, I know that this is real._ You _know that this is real. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t I know? The things, the people would all seem strange, off somehow.”_

_“You see but you don’t observe, John!” Sherlock said, a frustrated shout. He jumped up and began to pace the sitting room floor as John watched him, exuding calm from his armchair because one of them had to be sane right now. Sherlock suddenly spun on his heel to face him, eyes bright in a way that twisted something in John’s gut. “You know what we have to do, John.”_

_Oh no. Oh god no. The blood that had been so happily pumping through his veins just a minute ago turned to ice and he felt his heart stop. Sherlock saw the change in his expression and dropped to his knees in front of him, placing his hands over John’s where they lay on the armrests._

_“John,” he started, his voice far too soft for John’s liking, “remember what you told me before? About if I died?”_

_“Sherlock, no. Please don’t do this.” His voice was much weaker than he’d wanted it to be, emotions playing havoc with his control._

_Sherlock’s eyes were intently fixed on his, a controlled sort of madness swirling in his irises. “What did you tell me, John?” Each word was carefully enunciated, and layered in command. He wasn’t going to let this go, god, there wasn’t any way out of this. He had to answer, as much as it pained him. As dangerous as it would be._

_“I said,” John started, his voice catching in his throat on his first attempt. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I said that if you died, there was no way I could go on living.”_

_It’d slipped out during an argument, one of their worse ones. Sherlock had been neglecting his welfare—like usual—and John had finally snapped, lecturing him for at least an hour while Sherlock snapped back that he was fine and didn’t need any help and had gotten along perfectly fine without John there, at which point John spat out that that was great for him, because he’d been fine without Sherlock before but now he wasn’t anymore and if Sherlock died because he was too much of an idiot to take care of himself then he was going to follow pretty damn soon after._

_Those words had sucked the air out of the room, their fighting voices instantly silenced by the truth that John had never meant to admit and that Sherlock didn’t seem to be able to comprehend, as he stood there blinking for even longer than when John told him he loved him for the first time. Slowly, Sherlock had come back out of it, and asked him one word; “Really?” And John had told the truth, giving a nod to indicate that yes, he was absolutely serious. Because the truth was, if there was no longer any Sherlock Holmes, there wouldn’t be John Watson. Sherlock made him, defined him, kept his world slowly spinning despite how it sometimes wanted to slam to a stop. Falling in love with him was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and losing him would be too much. He wouldn’t be able to continue. So yes, he had meant that, and he still did. But this…this wasn’t what he’d intended. This wasn’t what those words were supposed to be used for._

_Sherlock was smiling at him, something triumphant in it, and John shook his head, starting, “No, Sherlock, that isn’t what I meant—”_

_“Oh, it’s exactly what you meant, you made that quite clear after you said it. You might not have thought that you’d be tested so soon, but you did mean it, John, I know you did.” His long, pale fingers stretched out over John’s wrists, curling underneath them to press against the pulse points on the insides of his wrists. His pale mint green eyes were fixed on John’s, and John found that he couldn’t look away, mesmerized by those beautiful irises that were currently caught in that bright cunning that he knew so well, the same look that was usually applied to suspects when Sherlock had arrived at the conclusion of their guilt. And he_ was _guilty, wasn’t he?_

_“It is the only way,” Sherlock said, his voice low, conspiratorial. These words were meant for John and John alone, meant to lull him into agreement, convince him that Sherlock, as always, was right. But he wasn’t, not this time, and John was starting to get desperate to prove it to him. “We are only wasting away in this prison while our bodies slowly starve to death on the floor of the sitting room in 221B, we have to get back to them at some point. I know years in the dream world are only a few hours in reality, but eventually we will have to get back or Mrs. Hudson is going to call the police and we’ll wake up in a hospital. Better to get out now, John, before we lose ourselves again in a false reality.”_

_No, he hadn’t lost himself in a false reality. Only Sherlock had. He had lost himself out there, and had yet to find his way back, despite how hard John was trying to lead him there. All it took was one look into those glacier blue eyes and he knew, god, he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to convince Sherlock of the reality of this world. He was utterly, fully convinced that this wasn’t reality, and guilt seized John’s heart and squeezed painfully, putting a tangible ache in his chest that had been lingering there for days, ever since they got back. God he was so afraid._

_“Sherlock,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice even, calm, “this is reality. And I am not going to let you—hurt yourself to get out of a world that’s already real. Please,” he said, his voice turning pleading, “just believe me when I say it’s real. I have followed you blindly into every mad situation that you’ve put me through, because I’ve always trusted you to make sure we make it out in the end. I’m only asking you to trust me this once.”_

_Sherlock didn’t answer for a minute, clearly struggling as his eyes searched John’s face, looking for something John didn’t know. He waited anxiously, nearly holding his breath as he looked straight back at Sherlock, his gaze the closest to pleading it would ever get. Finally, though, Sherlock sighed, dropping his gaze to one of the wrists that he still held, feeling the fragile beat of John’s heart just below his skin._

_“Fine,” he said, concession in his tone. “I’ll trust you.”_

_And John leaned forward to kiss his forehead, something in his heart twisting because he knew the words weren’t true._

 

He was on an elevator. One of the old-fashioned kinds, with a metal grate over the front and raised buttons to indicate where he wanted to go.  It was dark inside, lit only by one dim bulb that he was sure was going to go out any second, and the whole thing seemed like something out of a horror movie, complete with the eerie feeling of creeping dread and the sense that he was somewhere he shouldn’t be, making an idiotic decision that would get him killed by the monster of this world. Though that feeling could just have been because he was trespassing in John’s mind, venturing someplace that he had no right to be. Right. He was in John’s mind. He had to take a slow breath in as he remembered that, releasing it in an even, regulated exhale. He had to be careful here.

The elevator was moving. Slowly, slowly, one centimeter at a time it was moving downwards, even though he didn’t recall pressing any of the buttons. The thought that this elevator might have a mind of its own didn’t do anything to settle the nerves fluttering in his stomach, eyes fixed on the metal grate to see what he could see through it. The first level he passed was an empty room with what looked like a dollhouse in it, though more complicated and realistic than any dollhouse he’d ever seen. That was it; no furniture, no decorations, nothing on the walls or in the room besides that one dollhouse. Well, if that wasn’t eerie he didn’t know what was. A heavy feeling of dread was creeping up his spine, and he had to continue his regulated breaths, a breathing exercise from his time on the force that had helped him in his everyday life, and was helping him now. God, he could use all the help he could get, considering what kind of crazy he’d gotten himself mixed up in. Though he didn’t really know how much until the elevator slowed to a stop, and ice water ran through his veins.

He was in 221B. He _knew_ that this was 221B, or at least John’s version of it, and the elevator appeared to have stopped in the doorway of the hallway that led to Sherlock’s room from the back of the kitchen. From this angle he could see what looked like two people on the couch, and he risked sliding the grate open to step out. It slid open silently, and he took a few soft steps into the kitchen before freezing in his tracks.

Oh god. That was _Sherlock_. Tall, pale, with eyes that were a pale mint green in this light and curls that were pitch black. He was dressed, however, entirely in black, wearing a black shirt underneath his jacket that Greg was sure he’d never worn in real life. It made his skin look delicate, paper white on the elegant throat that rose above the collar of the shirt. The black suited him at the same time as it unsettled Greg. He couldn’t quite place his finger on it, but something seemed off about him, about the scene, about how he looked. It wasn’t quite the Sherlock that he knew. It was like a stranger was in Sherlock’s clothes, pretending to be him. Yes, that was it; perhaps it was just the unreality of the whole situation, of seeing Sherlock there, but it felt like whoever was sitting on the couch next to John was just an actor playing the part of Sherlock. Not really him.

But it _was_ him. Plain as day, right there on the couch, sitting with his body angled towards John, who was sitting with him as if all of this was completely normal. They were both facing each other, leaning in with their elbows on their knees, though Sherlock had a hand on John’s cheek, fingertips gently playing with some of the blonde hair on the side of his head as John looked so _broken_. That was the only way to put it. John looked like he was liable to break into a dozen pieces at any moment, only held together by Sherlock’s hand on his cheek and the soft gaze the other man was giving him, the placement of his hand ensuring that John maintained eye contact with him.

“You know what you have to do,” that baritone that Greg had thought he would never hear again said, soft enough that he almost didn’t pick up the words.  
“I can’t, Sherlock,” came John’s voice back, and there was a heartbreaking frailty in that voice.

Sherlock’s eyes intensified, something accusatory in them. “You promised me, John,” he said, and there was a hushed silence in which John seemed to be struggling for words and Sherlock just watched him, those eyes far too sharp, too keen. Completely focused on John, and John alone. Until they flashed up, catching Greg.

Jesus Christ. Greg found that he had physically flinched from that gaze. That wasn’t Sherlock. It might have looked like Sherlock, and talked like Sherlock, and acted like Sherlock, but there was no way in hell that it actually was, because even on his blackest days Sherlock wouldn’t have been able to produce a look like that.

There was nothing human in it. Sherlock had always been able to make you think that he could see straight through you, but this was different. This—this _thing_ that looked like Sherlock could actually see straight through him, see straight to his very core and find out whatever secrets he may have been hiding. Greg found that his breathing had temporarily halted, and it stuttered to a start again now, the breaths coming in unevenly at first. Jesus Christ. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting to find in the depths of John’s mind, but he certainly hadn’t expected this nightmare version of Sherlock, the one that had been so soft and kind with John just a moment before and now was looking at Greg as if he could, and _would_ tear him into pieces if only given the opportunity.

John evidently saw Sherlock’s change and followed his line of sight to Greg, his expression instantly changing into a cross between anger, shock, and fear. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said instantly, rising from the couch and striding over to Greg, forcefully pushing him back into the elevator and shutting the door. Sherlock slowly uncoiled like a predator from the couch, his eyes staying fixed on Greg the entire time as he took one step, then two, to watch them, that same dark look in his eyes, even as John pressed a button and the elevator began to rise to another level. The elevator was moving too slowly, there was an urgency in Greg that the world around him didn’t seem to share and he was caught with his eyes fixed on Sherlock, slowly watching him disappear centimeter by centimeter until, finally, he was gone from view, and Greg could turn his eyes to John.

John was determinedly not looking at him, even as he said, “You shouldn’t be here, Greg.”

“What is this place?” Greg countered with, and John shook his head.

They were at the top level when the elevator stopped, and Greg recognized a particular street in London, a crime scene where Sherlock was flitting about as usual and no doubt making deductions at the speed of sound, though they were too far away to hear. It was still so strange to see Sherlock like this, see him moving about and speaking and breathing. Like he was actually still alive, and not buried in a lovely cemetery not too far from Baker Street.

John opened the grate, leaning against the doorway of the elevator as he watched Sherlock with blue eyes that looked so fucking lost that something tightened in Greg’s chest to the point of pain. He turned to look at the scene as well just to make the pressure ease a bit, and he noticed that Sherlock’s eyes would occasionally flick over in their direction, though thank god they didn’t stay fixed on him with that fucking look from the previous level.

“These are my dreams. This is the only way I can dream anymore,” John said after a minute, and Greg was momentarily confused before he remembered that he’d asked in the first place.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” he asked. Because surely this was a lot of effort to go through just to dream, so he was doing it to himself on purpose, bringing himself to this place on purpose.

John’s voice was brittle when he spoke. “Because in my dreams we’re still together.”

Oh god. As Greg cast another glance at Sherlock, then looked back to John, everything clicked into place. “Oh god,” he said, voice colored with shock. “These are memories, aren’t they? Irene said to never build from memory, she said—” He couldn’t finish that sentence, the implications too much, and John stepped back in and slid the gate shut, pressing a button to take them down to a different level. “You’re trying to keep him alive in here, you can’t let him go.”

“You don’t understand. These are all memories that I regret,” John said, his face set in a hard mask that Greg didn’t want to break through even if he could have. “Things that I have to change.”

“What’s down there that you regret?” Greg asked, reaching for the ‘B’ for Basement button, and John instantly caught his hand.

“Nothing you need to see,” he answered.

The elevator stopped in what looked like a hospital hallway, and it took a few minutes before Greg recognized it as the halls of St. Bart’s. John opened the gate and stepped out this time, walking towards a door at the end of the hall as Greg followed slowly, the hall too dark for his taste. After his run in with the Sherlock all dressed in black (not the same Sherlock that had been at the crime scene, strangely enough, but that was the logic of dreams), he wasn’t fond of dark spaces and the potential lurking in them. It was strange, really. How hard it was to shake the image of Sherlock in that black suit, eyes cold, inhuman as he looked at Greg from the couch while still tenderly touching John as if he was the only thing he cared about in this world. And as if he would tear apart anyone who so much as tried to touch him. Touch what was his. Yes, that was it. John was his possession, and therefore his to take care of, and Greg was the intruder, the thief in danger of stealing him away. Trying to bring him back into reality.

As they approached the door, he saw through the small window in it Sherlock, hunched over a microscope and looking the saddest Greg had ever seen him. He was entirely alone in the lab, not even Molly there to keep him company and bear his insults, left by himself to…well, Greg wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to be doing, because it only looked like he was falling apart without someone (John) to put him back together again.

“I got a call,” John said after a moment, his voice soft. “That Mrs. Hudson had been shot. I told him, and he brushed it off. We had a fight about it, and I called him a machine because he didn’t seem to care and wasn’t going to go. I didn’t realize it was because he was going to go to the roof, with Moriarty.” He paused, a tremble in his voice when he continued. “I had to leave, I had to go see if Mrs. Hudson is alright, but I paused. I turned back, and I looked at him through the window, because I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it is. I thought about going back in, but I remembered Mrs. Hudson, and I changed my mind.” He felt awful about this, he really did, but John was distracted, and well...he needed to know. Had to know. He took a step back amongst John’s words, careful to leave them undisturbed. John was too distracted to notice him, too lost to see him steadily backing up, moving towards the elevator. “I turned, and I kept walking. I left him.” There was a heavy weight to those words, a deeper meaning that went beyond this memory. John almost sounded…guilty? Yes, he sounded guilty. Like he’d done something wrong, caused some sort of irreversible damage, and this moment wasn’t it. Something bigger was going on here, something that Greg didn’t entirely understand, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. But he had to. “No matter what I do, I can’t change this moment. I’m about to go back in, but I don’t…”

Greg ran the last bit of distance, John’s head snapping back to look at him as the grate slammed shut, and he pressed the button for the basement, already sinking down even as he heard John’s cry of “No!” and the sound of the other man running towards the elevator. God he didn’t want to do this but he had to, he had to see what was down there, what regret John was keeping locked away from everyone but himself. It couldn’t be good—god knew it was going to be awful, whatever it was—but he had to see.

Because this, this was why John had been fading away. This was why he no longer smiled genuinely, why he seemed like he never slept, why he was so broken and shaky and barely keeping it together. Building from memories meant losing yourself in the dream space. And John…John was so clearly lost. He was shaking apart, and trying to keep himself together by using memories of Sherlock and a dream facsimile of him as a faulty glue that only broke him further every time he applied it. And Greg had done this in the first place to help, hadn’t he? So he needed to see what was down here, what John was hoping to hide from the world, what memory he kept torturing himself with every time he went under. He needed to see what version of Sherlock occupied the basement level, and if it was dangerous or not.

He exhaled shakily as the elevator descended, his nerves completely shot by this point. Jesus Christ! He jumped as a Tube train whizzed right past him on the level he was passing, allowing him a brief glimpse of the station as well as the train before the elevator was sinking steadily again, slipping past the dark space between two levels before—oh no. He held his breath as he passed the dream version of 221B, half expecting Sherlock to charge the elevator and start violently shaking the grate in an effort to get to him and attack. But no one came. The flat appeared empty, and he could hear the drifting strains of violin music, a vaguely familiar and slightly haunting song, and then the elevator was past again, and he could breathe.  Until it stopped, that was, and let him out directly onto a street. It took him a minute to recognize where he was, but then he realized, his heart dropping into his stomach, that he was on the street in front of St. Bart’s. And there was a lone figure standing on the roof.

Sherlock.

A phone began ringing, and Greg realized with a start that it was in his pocket even though he hadn’t had one on him a minute before. He pulled it out, pausing for a moment before answering with a hesitant, “Hello?”

“What are you doing here?” Something cold and sharp shot straight down his spine at the sound of that familiar baritone layered with ice until it was something foreign, something nearly inhuman.

Words didn’t happen for a minute, because his brain appeared to have stopped working. It was a combination of factors, the sharp, arresting sight of Sherlock up on that very roof combined with the shock that came from that voice, the equivalent of being submerged with no warning in ice water from head to toe. Cold enough to make it hard for him to breathe.  

When he found his voice again, all he could manage was, “I—Sherlock—”

“What. Are. You. Doing. _Here_?” the voice asked, each word firmly spoken except the last, which was hissed. “Where’s John? Put John on the phone.”

He wasn’t sure he could even speak coherently at the moment. A strange kind of fear was pinning him in place, gazing up at Sherlock where he stood, looking down at him with that same intensity that he’d had before when Greg had realized exactly how wrong this world was, this version of someone he’d once counted as a friend. This was the same version of Sherlock that had stopped him dead with a look in the faux 221B when he’d first entered John’s mind. This was the version of Sherlock that was dangerous, feral, liable to attack at any moment if he had the chance. And for some reason, despite the fact that they were separated by a long fall and a sudden stop, he didn’t feel any safer. There was something in the air, something in Sherlock’s tone and his voice and his very bearing that made it seem like he could hurt Greg right now, even with the distance between them. And Greg didn’t want to take the risk of invoking his anger.

Sherlock wasn’t going to stand for Greg’s silence, evidently. “Where is he?” he nearly growled. “Put him on the phone! You’re not supposed to be here, he is.”

“I’m—I’m just trying to understand,” Greg said weakly after a minute, his answer to Sherlock’s question severely delayed because that same dread from earlier was creeping up, taking hold at the base of his skull and squeezing there, applying a gentle pressure to his brain. That gentle pressure was turning into _get out get out get out_ though, adrenaline kicking in and telling him to turn and run, because a predator had caught sight of him and he was pinned under its gaze, waiting to be dissected. And Sherlock could dissect someone so well, couldn’t he?

Apparently that was the wrong answer, as Sherlock started speaking in a voice that was smoothly dangerous, like a snake slithering through tall grass. “How could you understand? You never understood what it’s like to be a lover, Greg, not really. Your joke of a marriage didn’t give you that experience, of being half of a whole.” That stung in a particularly Sherlock way, reminiscent of all of the sniping comments he’d made in the past— _when he was alive_ , his brain so helpfully whispered—but much worse, because there had never been any real malice behind Sherlock’s insults. They’d been offhand comments, for the most part, as easy as breathing for Sherlock, who exuded a certain type of cruelty as a defense mechanism. Not true cruelty though, never true cruelty. That had all decreased with John, anyway. This, this new version of Sherlock that meant for his words to leave a mark, that was truly frightening. Another sign that he was in a completely different world, one he was now sure he didn’t want to be in. “I’ll tell you what it’s like. You’re waiting for a train.” He found that he couldn’t look away, couldn’t even move from where he stood, transfixed by the sight of Sherlock and the hypnotic quality of his voice. Gentle and deadly at the same time, like the peaceful sensation that came with drowning. “A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure. But it doesn’t matter. How can it not matter where that train will take you?”

He felt the phone slide out of his hand before he realized what was happening, and then John was next to him, the phone pressed to his ear. “Because you’ll be together,” he finished, and Greg found himself staring at him instead of at Sherlock. But somehow he could still hear the other man’s voice through the phone, and each word spoken in that voice chilled him to his core.

“How could you bring him here, John?”

“I’m sorry,” John said, that same fragile quality still in his voice.

“John, you promised.”

“I know, Sherlock, I’m sorry—”

“You _promised!_ ”

Jesus Christ.  Greg’s eyes snapped back to Sherlock, that terrible fear rising up in a quick motion and latching onto his spinal cord, putting pressure on the back of his head to run, and run now, because something terrible was about to happen and the only way he could protect himself and John was to run. But John didn’t look afraid. Why didn’t he look afraid, didn’t he understand that that, that _thing_ up on the rooftop was about to do something horrible? Didn’t he realize the danger they were both in? Or maybe he wasn’t in danger at all. Maybe he was protected from this dream Sherlock, and Greg was the only one at risk. God that was a thought, wasn’t it?

“Greg, you have to go now,” John said calmly, and Greg tore his eyes away from Sherlock to look at him again. His face was set into a determined mask, just a hint of grimness in it, a seriousness that went along with his grave tone.

Greg found himself nodding on instinct, his heart picking up speed because yes, god yes, he’d seen too much and he wanted to leave, _now_. “Right, okay,” he said, his voice much quieter than he’d intended it to be. As if he would be safe from Sherlock as long as the other man didn’t hear him.

“Now,” John said, keeping his eyes fixed on Sherlock, and Greg nodded again, heading for the elevator, his steps slow, careful as he kept his eyes on Sherlock, afraid of the consequences of moving. Afraid of everything at the moment, a kind of fear he’d only experienced when staring down the barrel of a gun in the line of duty.

“John.” The name was hissed out, and somehow Greg could still hear the voice on the other end of the line, that dangerous voice that made his skin crawl with dread.

“Greg. Run,” John said, and Greg turned and ran for the elevator, hearing the sound of footsteps pursuing him and he slammed the grate shut just in time, turning to see Sherlock slam into the grate, shaking it furiously. Jesus fucking Christ. His face was twisted into a snarl, nothing human left in his expression and Greg backed up as far as he possibly could in the elevator, hurriedly pressing the button to go to another level, any other level.

And then he woke up.

***

Greg woke up with a gasp, coming out of the dream and gasping for air like he couldn’t breathe, like he was choking on the memories he’d found locked up in John’s subconscious. And yes, yes he was, he was drowning in the flood that came from being where he’d just been and seeing what he’d just seen. The very depths of John’s subconscious, and Jesus, he didn’t know what he’d been expecting to find, but it hadn’t been that.

Next to him, he saw John, blue eyes open and a deep anger in his irises as he removed the IV from his arm, clearly out of the dream world and definitely furious.

“John—” Greg started, but didn’t get anywhere as John cut him off with, “What the fuck were you doing, Greg? What the bloody hell were you thinking, going into my fucking head? You had no right to be there.”

“I—” Greg stopped, not really having an answer for John. He’d been snooping, that was it, that was the only reason that he’d be in there at all, but how was he supposed to tell John that? Honesty wasn’t the best policy here. So instead he changed the subject. “What are _you_ doing, John? What is—what are you doing with that _thing_ in your head?”

John stood, looking away from him irritably as he rubbed his hands along his pant legs. His hand strayed, just for a moment, to his chest, but he ripped it back, clearly upset with himself. He didn’t answer Greg, and they sat in a heavy silence, laden with the knowledge of what they’d both just experienced.

“You can’t—you can’t do this to yourself, John. You can’t keep him locked up in a prison of memories, he’s a danger to you and everyone else on this mission if he gets free. Does anyone else on the team know?”

John shook his head, and Greg let out a slow exhale, leaning back in his chair. “Jesus Christ.”

“It’s fine.” John’s voice was short, clipped, and strangely fragile. Not that Greg could blame him.

“Jesus bloody Christ it’s not fine! Is that why you don’t want to know the layouts? So Sherlock can’t know them and ruin the entire mission? God, John. He’ll kill us all if he can.”

“It’s under control,” John said, his own voice tight, controlled. Very carefully controlled, a mixture of rage and pain that made something in Greg’s chest twist tightly. God. This had all gone to hell because of Sherlock, because he’d taken a swan dive off of a building and everyone else was left to pick up his pieces. And John couldn’t seem to handle that anymore, wasn’t grounded in reality like the rest of them were. He was on his own, drifting in a limbo between this world and the one in his dreams, the one where Sherlock was still alive, but no longer Sherlock. No longer the person that Greg had known so well, had worked with, had lived with for so long. He wasn’t Sherlock anymore. He wasn’t even human.

“John—”

They were interrupted by a knock on the door, and both turned to see Sebastian standing in the doorway, and both pairs of eyes went to him, one full of barely hidden pain and the other full of concern.

“It’s time,” he said.


End file.
